OKLAHOMA CITY — There are no strangers in the NBA Finals.
By early June, there are 82 regular-season games of evidence that get broken down and digested by the video room staff of each team, passed along in bite-sized chunks to be pored over for tendencies, habits, and moments of inspiration that can be used against an opponent.
Even more relevant are all the data points from three playoff rounds where players and teams reveal how they respond in the highest-stakes moments against the best competition. And then the series begins, and over however many games, teams get to know their opponent like brothers.
But one of the interesting wrinkles of the 2025 Finals, where the favoured Oklahoma City Thunder are getting set to host the Indiana Pacers in Game 1 on Thursday night, is that a subset of each team are already brothers, have known each other and each other’s games for years, decades in some cases.
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A new champion will be crowned as the Oklahoma City Thunder and Indiana Pacers face off in the NBA Finals. Which team will hoist the Larry O’Brien Trophy for the first time? Watch on Sportsnet and Sportsnet+.
There are four Canadians playing in the Finals, all with significant roles: NBA MVP Shai Gilgeous-Alexander and Lu Dort for the Thunder and Andrew Nembhard and Bennedict Mathurin for the Pacers.
They all have a shared history and are aware of the significance of sharing it on the brightest stage for basketball on the planet. The “Canadian basketball is on the rise” storyline has been relevant for nearly 15 years now, at least since childhood friends and rivals Cory Joseph and Tristan Thompson — each on playoff teams this year
— were first-round picks out of Texas in 2011. Their careers may be winding down, but each will retire with championship rings, earned in 2014 and 2016, respectively.
There is the impact of Steve Nash, the Vince Carter effect and the generations of kids who took up the game when inspired by the arrival of the Toronto Raptors.
And this isn’t even the first time there have been four Canadians in the NBA Finals. It happened last season when Oshae Brissett was with the Boston Celtics and A.J. Lawson, Olivier-Maxence Prosper and Dwight Powell were with the Dallas Mavericks.
Outside of the United States, no country has produced more NBA players than Canada for 11 straight years.
But these Finals feel like the culmination of something, with Gilgeous-Alexander standing on top of the league with his MVP award and Dort, Nembhard and Mathurin each critical to their team’s championship hopes, all just beginning the prime of their careers.
“It’s hard to even wrap your head around,” Gilgeous-Alexander said when I asked him about sharing the stage at his first NBA Finals with friends and national team teammates. “There’s so many kids that played in the same games that we played. For us to make it to this stage is a testament to our hard work, our character, people around us that helped us get here.
“It’s been a blessing.”
The ties run deep.
Dort, the burly wing for the Thunder who earned first-team all-defence honours this season, attended fellow Montrealer and fellow Haitian-Canadian Mathurin’s draft party when the Arizona product was the sixth overall pick by Indiana in the 2022 draft.
The two have a bond that runs far beyond being young, wealthy and playing in the NBA. They each know the journey they and their families made from Haiti to the north end of Montreal and then beyond as their basketball talents flourished.
“I think it’s a great thing. I think it’s a great opportunity for me, Lu, the whole Montreal city,” said Mathurin, who will likely need to have a significant role providing some scoring punch off the bench if the Pacers, fourth-seed in the Eastern Conference, are going to overcome the Thunder, which went a league-best 68-14 in the regular season and are 12-4 in the playoffs.
“I think it’s a great step in the right direction just to be able to go against each other. Lu’s a great friend of mine. I would call him brother right now, but we’re enemies. (But) just going into the Finals, it’s a great thing from where we from (and for) the Haitian community, as well. I’m looking forward to play against him and create history.”
Said Dort or his fellow Montrealer: “He’s a good friend, a brother, honestly. I’ve always supported him a lot, I’m really happy for what he’s been doing in his career and now we’re at this point where we have to compete (on this stage), it will be really fun.
The Pacers’ Nembhard first encountered Dort when playing for the Ontario provincial team and Dort was representing Quebec at the national championships. It was a memorable experience.
“He was the same size in the eighth grade (as he is now),” said Nembhard of Dort, who looks more like an NFL linebacker than an NBA guard. “He was pinning shots, dunking, crazy stuff. We were definitely talking about checking his ID. He was built. But he came out of the womb like that.”
Those battles meant that when Nembhard joined the Canadian men’s national team this past summer for the Olympics, there was already a built-in respect. Dort told me that Nembhard’s rise as a critical player for the Pacers in what is now the 25-year-old from Aurora, Ont.’s third NBA season since going 31st overall in the 2022 draft hasn’t surprised him, but playing together at the Olympics gave him a new appreciation for Nembhard’s defensive abilities.
“I’ve been playing against Drew since I was in high school, so I kind of know what type of defensive player he is,” said Dort. “(But) it’s been impressive to see it up close this past summer.”
Gilgeous-Alexander will be the one testing Nembhard defensively when the ball goes up Thursday night.
No single player can stop the Thunder star, who is shredding defences loaded up to stop him almost as easily during the playoffs as he did in the regular season when he led the NBA in scoring at 32.4 per game but did it with Steph Curry-like efficiency as his career-best 63.7 true shooting percentage (reflecting his precision on two-point field goals, three-point field goals and free throws) would indicate.
He’s leading the playoffs in scoring at 32.7 points per game, and after a slow start in OKC’s first-round sweep of Memphis, Gilgeous-Alexander has a true shooting mark of 60.0 over the past two rounds, which is still considered elite, especially against post-season defences.
It’s a long way from the club basketball battles they used to have as kids, when Nembhard was playing a couple of age groups up for his home club in Vaughan, Ont., taking on YAACE.
“We were the top teams growing up,“ said Nembhard. “Nickeil (Alexander-Walker, Minnesota Timberwolves guard and Gilgeous-Alexander’s cousin) was on that team too. But it was just fun, we were just little kids, enjoying hoops.”
The stakes are higher now.
Did playing alongside Gilgeous-Alexander give Nembhard any potential advantage in what could be the critical match-up of the series (though Dort’s ability to contain Pacers star Tyrese Haliburton will doubtless be a big factor too)?
“I’d like to say it did, but I’m not exactly sure,” said Nembhard, who helped contain New York Knicks star Jalen Brunson in the Eastern Conference Finals. “I’ve got to figure it out when I play him.
“He’s physically imposing, sneakily quick, he has a good change of pace, he has a feel for the game, he’s comfortable out there,” were the top-line items on Nembhard’s scouting report on his former youth hoops rival and Olympic teammate. “And he’s a little unpredictable, the way his feel and his timing is.”
It’s a package of skill and athletic ability that has lifted Gilgeous-Alexander to the peak of the NBA and the Thunder to the precipice of a championship. If he and the Thunder can follow through, it will give Gilgeous-Alexander something that no other Canadian can lay claim to – the MVP award and an NBA title, something two-time MVP Nash could never quite manage through years of playoff heartbreak during his peak with the Phoenix Suns from 2004-05 to 2011-12.
But Nash, an early supporter of Gilgeous-Alexander when he put him on the Canadian men’s national team in the summer of 2016 before the Thunder star had even finished high school, can be proud of the legacy that will be on display over the course of these very Canadian NBA Finals.
“Steve obviously is just a pioneer for Canadian basketball,” said Gilgeous-Alexander. “He started the whole thing, I guess you can say. From the way he plays, to the way he carries himself, to his approach to the game, like, I learned so much from Steve being a 17-year-old kid in two weeks of time that helped me get here for sure.
“The things he’s done with Canada basketball as a whole and just pushing the culture forward is just amazing.
“To win a title on top of everything that happened this year would be special.”
It would be special for the Thunder and Gilgeous-Alexander and his teammate and former rookie roommate Dort. It would be heartbreaking for Nembhard and Mathurin and the Pacers, and likely a good portion of Canadian basketball fans who will undoubtedly be torn watching some of the best players the country has ever produced, no matter who comes out on top.
In this, Dort’s words of advice for Canadian basketball fans ring true:
“Enjoy it. Obviously, we represent our teams here,” he said. “But at the end of the day we represent our country, as well. It’s going to be really fun.”
